Why The Computer Won’t Be Going Into The Cloud Anytime Soon – Andrew Min

A friend of mine, Andrew Min, wrote an excellent article on cloud computing. It expands on my ideas from my previous post.

Check it out!

Vacation

I’m on vacation in Malabar, FL, and will not be home or able to write an article until Friday, August 22nd.  We’re being affected by Fay right now, but rest assured that I am indeed safe.

Thoughts on YouTube

YouTube Logo

Who doesn’t love YouTube?  Many people probably visit YouTube multiple times daily, whether it’s to watch some comedic videos to brighten their day, or perhaps to watch some news footage that was uploaded by a reliable news source.  YouTube, albeit being just over three years old, according to Alexa, is the fourth most visited website in the United States!  And even though Alexa doesn’t publish actual traffic numbers, in layman’s terms, YouTube is bringing in a ton of traffic.  That’s basically common knowledge at this point.  One would think that with YouTube’s recent acquisition by Google, and it’s high traffic numbers, it’d be doing really well for itself.  Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Let’s consider the most important and fundamental reason why people use YouTube – it’s free!  It’s absolutely free to both content providers, and content receivers.  Even though people consider Google as an endless money pit, running the fourth most popular website in the United States, isn’t cheap.  At this current moment in time, this is where YouTube is struggling.  It’s struggling to make money.  People will argue that 50 to 100 million dollars in revenue each year is quite a bit, which it is, but again, it’s the fourth most popular website in the nation.  Along with that statistic, one has to consider YouTube’s industry.  It’s streaming video!  So not only is it the fourth most popular site in the nation, but it also is the number one online video streamer.  Streaming video eats bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money; it’s that simple.

YouTube cofounder Steven Chen promised that live video streaming would be added to YouTube this year.  It’s new owner, Google, nixed the idea, due to cost.  In a Valleywag article today, it said:

YouTube execs estimated that if just 10 percent of the service’s users took advantage of live streaming, the company would have to add 20 to 25 percent to its huge server and bandwidth infrastructure to support it.

That’s ridiculous.  It’s almost guranteed that if YouTube added live streaming, more than 10% of the users would take advantage of the feature, which links back to the cost factor.  YouTube is already expensive to run, and advertisers aren’t that interested.

Advertisers are only interested in a small percentage of videos on YouTube, and the users of the site do not want to see ads.  YouTube currently employs two types of ads.  They have a rather large banner ad to the right of many videos, and more recently, they’ve begun adding pop-up advertisements embedded within the videos themselves.  Consumers, including myself, hate these, and many simply ignore them, or in the case of the pop-up ads, just close them without even reading or clicking them.  Sure, the companies paid to have the advertisements displayed, but most ad revenue services, including Google’s own AdSense service, works based on the number of clicks on an advertisement.  If people aren’t clicking, then the advertisers and the site displaying the ads, in this case, YouTube, aren’t making any money, and that’s a problem.  Not only are people not clicking, but the price per click on ads is usually very low to begin with.  Therefore, even if a few people are clicking on the ads, it’s simply not bringing in enough money.

YouTube is in a tight spot right now.  People expect it to work, and people expect new features and innovation from the company.  It’s hard to innovate, however, when the budget runs tight.  YouTube needs to find a way to make advertising on the site more appealing to not only consumers, but also to advertisers if it wants to survive.  I’ll even be so strong and say that if YouTube can’t find a way to make advertising more appealing soon, within five years, the site is going to start having serious financial problems.  Those problems could, unfortunately, lead to the end of YouTube.

Issues With “Cloud Computing”

The theory behind cloud computing is a wonderful one.  Imagine an infinitely scalable sever cluster that theoretically has no limits.  Need more space or bandwidth?  Just pop in an extra server.  For end users, cloud computing is nice, because it gives them access to services that use a cloud without having to worry about the complex infrastructure that supports it.  The main problem with cloud computing at this stage is that the statement that says things that sound too good to be true usually are, applies heavily.

More and more web 2.0 companies are turning to a cloud for their infrastructure.  For example, Apple’s MobileMe service, Amazon’s S3 service, Squarespace, and many others.  The trend will only continue until one day, everything is up in the cloud, and every service is using some too good to be true, infinitely scalable cloud infrastructure.  That’s a bit of a problem because of the dependence it builds.

Not only are cloud infrastructures not always 100% reliable, the term is confusing to many consumers because it’s being thrown around as the new buzzword on the Internet.  Hell, Dell is even trying to trademark it, which is bullshit by the way (1).  For example, today, GMAIL went down for nearly everyone that uses it.  Does GMAIL use a cloud system?  I guess so, considering they continue to increase storage and run a massive cluster of servers.  Another example is Apple’s MobileMe service.  Although it looks good on the surface, it’s having more issues underneath than I can even begin to discuss here.  Amazon’s S3 service went down a few months ago, and brought down half the Internet with it.  Twittter, Pownce, Center Networks, all use S3 for image and other file related storage.  The new media/web 2.0 scene became so dependent on one cloud that when it failed, it brought down enough sites to make the whole blogosphere go crazy.

What’s my advice for now?  Be wary about a service claiming to use a cloud infrastructure.  Educate yourself on what it really is, and if it would make sense for that respective service to be using a cloud.  Also, always back up your data, and don’t ever become entirely dependent on one service – no one nor any service can guarantee 100% uptime or reliability.

(1) Dell can’t patent “cloud computing.”  First of all, Dell didn’t invent cloud computing, and second of all It fails the generalization test.  A company can’t patent a general term.  Now if Dell was making a product called the “Dell Cloud,” sure they could patent that.  But the simple term of cloud computing is an adjective to describe the way something is hosted or the way a service is delivered.  Sorry Dell, but this is ridiculous, and your efforts are going to fail miserably.

101 Classic Computer Ads – Boing Boing

An Old Appe Ad

It’s hard to believe how far the industry has come in the last twenty years.  These ads made me both smile, laugh, and in some cases just simply stare.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like living with what was considered the “latest and greatest” technology a few decades ago.  If this industry has come this far in twenty years, imagine where we’ll be twenty years from now.  Flying around in little spaceships, perhaps?

[Boing Boing]